Saturday, June 7, 2014

Swings and roundabouts

It is always interesting to consider expressions still in use that refer back to bygone days, activities and customs. Sometimes they reflect how attitudes, safety concerns, technology and awareness have changed over time

A little while back I used the expression “What you gain on the swings you lose on the roundabouts.”

It simply means what you gain in one circumstance or choice you lose in another so that it all ends up evening out. You want a bigger, nicer house; you pay more for the purchase, mortgage, rates, insurance.

But what can you gain on swings that you lose on roundabouts? What do they have in common as regards gains and losses: Time? Enjoyment?

For those not in the know, a roundabout is a children’s play device that used to be found in parks in the days before thought was given to child safety.

The ones I remember looked like this:

But the Poms made them even more deadly. They raised the central parts, making it more dangerous to be flung off at speed . . .

. . . and made a fiendish variation called a Witch’s Hat Roundabout . . .

Sometimes they were positioned alongside each other . . .

To make them even more deadly, they were sometimes then put on a concrete surface:

Even their swings were designed for maximum risk . . .

But that was tame compared to other children’s park activities in the days before OHS . . .

Here's another, showing that the depressing conditions of English council housing estates were often repeated in trying to provide a recreational outlet for the children growing up there:

This photograph is of the playground in the Halton Moor Estate, near Leeds. Note the height of the slippery dip.

The estate was constructed in the 1930's and contained approximately 1000 homes, made up of semi-detached houses, with some detached and terraced houses and some high rise blocks of flats. Decline was so severe that the estate was recommended for demolition but ultimately demolition was confined to some, with renovation of others. Regeneration is continuing.